


Aconitum

by Siavahda



Series: The Lightbringer Princes [2]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Aconitum is another name for Wolfsbane, Don't mess with the Morgensterns, Everyone is a Morgenstern, Gen, Incest thoughts/feelings, Royalty, Runed AU, Valentine is scary, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 17:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siavahda/pseuds/Siavahda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Downworlders call Jace Wolfsbane, and say that Jonathan has a necklace of lycanthrope teeth, which is always growing longer.</p>
<p>It is true.</p>
<p>This is why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aconitum

   The Downworlders call Jace Wolfsbane, and say that Jonathan has a necklace of lycanthrope teeth, which is always growing longer.

   It is true.

   This is why.

*

   When Symeon was nine years old, Jonathan kissed Isabelle.

   It wasn’t that Symeon saw it: he didn’t. He only heard about it later, when Jonathan crept into Jace’s room that night to tell his brothers about it.

   “But…why would you do that?” Symeon had asked, bewildered and hurt.

   Jonathan had shrugged. “I thought I ought to see what it was like,” he said. “I’m probably going to marry her someday, after all.”

   _“What?”_ Symeon had never met a married couple – well, maybe some of the servants were married, but if they were he didn’t know about it – but he knew that being married to someone meant you loved them more than anything. “Why would you marry _Isabelle?”_ He looked at Jace. “Tell him,” he urged. “He’s not going to marry Izzy, is he? He’s supposed to marry _us_.”

   Both his brothers had laughed, and Jace had ruffled his hair. “Brothers don’t marry brothers, Symeon,” Jace told him. “Where did you get that idea?”

   Symeon had stared at him, uncomprehending. Dread, like a shadow across the sun, made him cold. “But I thought…”

   “It would be incest,” Jonathan said, amused. “And even _I_ know that’s wrong. Sorry, kid. Brothers don’t love brothers like that.”

   “Oh,” Symeon whispered. He didn’t say anything else, and not long after that they went their separate ways to their own rooms. Symeon didn’t sleep at all.

   He spent the next week frantically searching through the library, hunting down every mention of the word Jonathan had used. _Incest_. He’d never heard it before, had never considered that maybe grown-up love – the kind with kissing and marriages and happily ever afters – _didn’t_ grow out of the bond between brothers. Didn’t everyone feel this way? Wasn’t everyone this close to their siblings? He’d thought his dead mother must be his father’s sister, and that was why he was so sad sometimes – because he’d lost something that Symeon couldn’t imagine not having, something much more important than kissing. How could you ever love some stranger more than – Symeon had thought _brother_ was just a word for part of yourself in another skin. Why else would you be bound by blood, if it wasn’t to hold the pieces of your soul together, to keep you together always?

   It didn’t take long, only a handful of entries in encyclopaedias and books of ethics, for that word _incest_ to bring Symeon’s world crashing down around him.  

   He ran from it. With tears streaming down his face he bolted, away from the books and the _word,_ the horrible, terrible word tearing through him like a bullet. His entire life, he’d always gone to his brothers when he was in pain, but now he couldn’t, because he was _sick_ , there was something _wrong_ with him. Even Downworlders didn’t want what he wanted, even _demons_ didn’t –

   He had to go. That was the only solution. He had to leave, before – before anyone found out, before they could hate him. He could go into the mundane world, he was sure. They wouldn’t find him there, and they’d never have to _know_.

   It was three years too early for the triquetra bond, three years too early for his brothers to have sensed his anguish and found him, stopped him. Symeon packed a knapsack and stole some food from the kitchens and no one was the wiser – his father locked in discussion with some of his lords, Jonathan at a lesson, Jace visiting the Lightwoods. The grooms saw him saddle up Nox, but Symeon was an expert rider even at nine, and had every permission to ride his stallion whenever he wanted.

   He was _not_ allowed to leave the manor grounds alone, but he never had before. Symeon was not a rule-breaker, and so no one had their eyes on him, confident in the surety that the youngest Morgenstern was polite and shy and always obedient to his father’s law. No one was watching when he galloped through the gates and vanished.

   All three Morgensterns knew the land around their home, but to varying degrees. Symeon had memorised maps, and he’d made trips to the homes of his father’s favourites – accompanied by the full might of his family. He and his brothers often rode and hunted in the immediate area, but once Nox carried him past the familiar landmarks Symeon began to realise that the world looked very different when it was not laid down in topography and centimetres.

   And it was a very, very long way to reach mundane lands. Symeon felt very small and very alone at the thought.

   But he was a Morgenstern, which meant that he didn’t flinch from hard things. He lifted his chin and gave Nox his head, and the powerful seraph-bred stallion devoured the miles.

   By all rights, the whole episode should have come to nothing but a slightly embarrassing family story. Valentine and his trackers would have found Symeon before long, and brought him home. There would have been a terrible scolding and a punishment, but both would have been born out of fear and worry and love, and that would have been the end of it. Symeon would have spent the rest of his life being gently teased for his terrible attempt at running away from home, but he ought to have suffered nothing worse than a little embarrassment.

   Instead, there was a pack of lycanthropes making a cautious foray into the Shadowhunter homeland, and they caught the scent of a lone Nephilim too close to the territory they had staked out for themselves.

   The Spanish Riding School of Vienna was home to the famous Lipizzaner horses. In the modern age, the Lipizzaners were called dancing horses – but once upon a time their dainty kicks and incredible bounding jumps had made them living weapons, as much a part of a soldier’s arsenal as a bayonet. The mundane world had moved on from a time when such things were necessary, and for the most part the Shadowhunter one had as well – horses weren’t much use hunting demons in nightclubs, or tracking vampires through a city. But seraph steeds were still trained, and those Nephilim raised in Idris still learned on them, and they were far more deadly than their mundane cousins had ever been.

   Nox reared and bugled when he sensed the werewolves, an equine scream that could be heard for miles in the dark – the first response of any lone seraph steed, a war-cry and a call for help. Symeon snapped out his blade and it glowed like starlight in the falling night, deftly keeping his seat, but ultimately he was nine years old, and between the horse and the boy he was the lesser threat. Yellow, green and red eyes came out of the shadows like jewels, and Nox’s hooves lashed out with a fierce animal scream. Wolves yelped and snarled, and blood ran; Nox pivoted and spun and leapt, kicking and biting, laying about himself and his rider like a black hurricane.

   Later, Symeon learned that the search party tracking him had heard Nox’s cry. They heard the horse’s shrieks of pain as the werewolves attacked en masse, and Symeon’s terrified scream as they dragged him from the saddle.

   His father had heard that.

   _Forget pride,_ Valentine had told his sons, when they were much younger than nine. _If you are alone and in danger, scream as loud as you can. Let others know where you are. Help might hear you._

   Help did hear, but they were too far and too late. By the time they arrived there was only a cluster of ruined werewolf corpses, skulls and ribcages crushed by Nox’s hooves, and the poor, brave horse, bleeding and broken-legged. Symeon’s seraph blade lay bloodied on the grass, but the Morgenstern princeling was gone.

*

   The wolves did not kill him out of hand, because as they pulled him from Nox’s back they saw, with their night-sharp eyes, the ring on his finger. The Morgenstern _M_ surrounded by stars.

   They knew who he was in an instant. They knew his _worth_.

   Even now, if anyone asks, Symeon does not remember anything. He does not remember how they tore strips from his shirt to bind his hands; he does not remember the taste of another strip gagging his mouth. He doesn’t remember the terror and the tears, or the animal stink of his captors. He doesn’t remember the moonlight on their teeth, or the bruises their hands left on his skin, or the horrible journey from Nox’s fallen body to the pack’s gathering place.

   He doesn’t remember thinking that maybe this is what he deserved.

   The lycanthropes moved camp the moment the hunting party came back with a royal hostage, hiding every trace of their presence so well that Symeon despaired, sure that no one could possibly track this pack. He was not far wrong. Only the fiercest, strongest band of wolves would dare to encroach on Shadowhunter land. They might have been stupid, to risk Valentine’s famous hatred of all things Downworlder; but they weren’t. They were canny and skilled.

   He doesn’t remember how they stripped him, either, and burned his clothes so any spells in them would be destroyed. He doesn’t remember how most of them laughed at his tears, easy in their own nakedness, or what it felt like to hear them discussing his fate – what and how much they might get for him, as if he were a slab of meat they meant to sell at market. And even when his brothers asked, even when Jonathan and Jace coaxed the story from him in whispers, late at night with them all curled up in Jonathan’s bed – even then, Symeon did not remember, and did not tell, how the pack leader pulled him into his lap and drew his teeth over Symeon’s throat.

   “Maybe we should send Valentine back a pup instead of a son,” he said mockingly. His hand was a fist in Symeon’s hair, holding the boy’s head to the side to pull his neck into a cruel arch. “What do you think, prince? Would your father reverse his laws if we changed you?” His breath was hot against Symeon’s throat, and Symeon still hears his voice in his nightmares. “Or would he put you down like a dog?”

   Symeon was crying too hard to answer, even when the wolf pulled his gag free.

   “And this is Valentine’s scion,” the monster snorted. “Pathetic.” He stroked a finger over his captive’s jaw – and then his blunt, human teeth sank into Symeon’s neck.

   Symeon does not remember screaming. He doesn’t remember the pack’s laughter, or how his knees hit the dirt when he was shoved from the leader’s lap. He does not remember how the bite – which would not infect him, from human teeth, but broke skin and made him bleed nonetheless – opened the floodgates.

   There are a great many wolves, and they hold a great many grudges towards his father. They have lost friends, mates, children to Valentine’s hunts and purges, and now they have his son.

   They gag him again, and then they hurt him.

*

   In the morning, they pry the ring from his finger and send it to his father. Bloody.

   They move camp again, while the messenger conveys their demands to Valentine.

   Both these things – the ring, and the messenger – are mistakes.

*

   They tell stories, still, of how his father poured molten silver down the throat of the werewolf who brought him his son’s ring. Of how his brothers stood and watched, and while the adult courtiers winced or gagged or looked away, pale and sick, the princes never even blinked.

   “You should have made it last longer,” is all Jonathan says, in the quiet after the wolf has finished dying.

*

   They say Valentine went down on his knees to beg the most powerful warlock in the world to find Symeon. Symeon isn’t sure he believes it – his father has never been the kind of man who can bend – but what _is_ true is that it’s his ring, and the blood on it, that lead the full force of the Nephilim’s rage to the pack’s door.

   When he tells this story, this is what Symeon says: he remembers the wolves surrounding him and Nox. He remembers the snarling, and Nox’s screams, and being dragged out of the saddle.

   And then – he says – he remembers his father. He remembers Valentine Morgenstern cutting through werewolves like the angel Michael, blazing and glorious and righteous in his wrath. And perhaps it is only the pain of his broken arm, but Symeon remembers looking at his father and seeing wings.

   He remembers, towards the end, that the pack leader snatches him up. “Not another step,” he snarls at Valentine, clutching Symeon like a doll, and Symeon is bruised and bloodied and his arm hangs badly, swollen and dark. He muffles a cry when the wolf shakes him, jolting it. “Or I’ll rip the pup’s throat out.”

   Valentine holds a seraph blade so red with blood it looks like ruby. “Don’t be scared, Symeon,” he says calmly, his eyes on the monster behind his son. “I’m here now.”

   The wolf growls, the sound made worse by his shifted teeth. “Step _back_ – ”

   He does not finish his sentence. He drops Symeon, who falls with a cry, and instantly his father is there, kneeling beside him on the ground and gathering him carefully close. Symeon shakes, and sobs, and his father hushes him and holds him tight, lets Symeon hide his face against Valentine’s shirt, away from the monster with the red blade still vibrating in his throat.

   “It’s all right,” his father swears, over and over. “It’s all right, Symeon. You’re safe now.”

*

   Valentine did change the laws, but not, perhaps, as Symeon’s kidnappers would have wanted. Nothing was different for vampires, but warlocks gained protection and gratitude. And as for werewolves – the Law ordered that all Children of the Moon be killed on sight.

   The edict holds to this day, and Jonathan’s necklace grows ever longer.


End file.
